


Twilight Time (or, What We Did After The End of The End Of The World)

by roxymissrose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-25
Updated: 2011-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-18 16:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roxymissrose/pseuds/roxymissrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Each day I pray for evening just to be with you, together at last at twilight time</i></p><p>This is what they did after the end of all things turned out to be not so very end-y at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twilight Time (or, What We Did After The End of The End Of The World)

_~Dean~_

  
At three o clock, Dean wipes his hands off on a shop rag, getting a little smear of grease on his forehead. It's almost ridiculously theatrical, as it just points out how pretty a green his eyes are, how long his lashes. And no one remarks on this out having learned years ago that Dean is fairly soft-spoken, likes to laugh, avoids arguments but isn't beyond beating the bloody hell out of someone to make his point. So…no teasing Dean about his looks. It's okay to joke about his abilities in the shop, in the sack, his singing—in fact, anything else is fair game. Just not that….

He's unsnapping his coveralls, lets the top swing loose as he lopes over to the time-clock, grabs his card and punches out. He glances around, running through his mental checklist of stuff to do before he leaves the garage for the day, rubbing his cold fingers together as he thinks. The garage is hot in summer, cold in winter and dark except when the bay doors are open. There's a little parts shop up front, the offices, time clock and lounge in the middle of the building and the garage takes up the back. Dean runs the place like it's his own, and at this point in time, the owner's pleased to let it be so. Dean's the best foreman he's ever had—he's the perfect combination of supportive and asshole. The guys love him--talk about him like a dog but will do anything he wants. In return, Dean's got their back. They know it.

Dean sticks his head in the office, calls out to the secretary-office manager. "Hey Gwen, I'm leaving. Tell the boss I'll see him tomorrow. George's got it under control. Tell Mr. Allen that Scion thing is done," and Dean shakes his head like he can't for the life of him imagine why someone would want to claim a car like that. He waves and heads down the road, past the post office, the liquor store, the deli, past the diner he has breakfast in almost every morning of the workweek. Walks past the uniform store where he buys his boots, his coveralls, and the heavy canvas barn jackets he's come to favor for work. He takes a right at the corner and walks up the gentle incline that is the street he lives on. The street is not as busy as the main drag, not as wide. It boasts a couple of 'antique' stores for the tourists, a tiny little café that serves a pretty decent coffee and they don’t mind if you sit with the paper and a cup for a couple of hours on a Sunday…the street is lined with trees, all of them at the moment unclothed, but a little fuzzy and reddish with leaves to come. It's still a little raw, so Dean shrugs the top of his coveralls back on. He stops in front of a duplex, a yellow two story house with a wrap-around porch, wicker furniture sitting on it, and empty baskets hanging from the porch eaves. In spring, they'll hold pansies and primrose, in summer impatiens and petunias. Nothing fancy or high maintenance, but nice to look at.

Dean whistles as he unlocks the front door, checks the double size mailbox. It holds bills, of course, and a couple of car magazines, some parts dealer's magazines, stuff he's not interested in, and a small package. He smiles and takes it all inside.

Inside, he puts the mail on the foyer table, hangs his keys and takes his boots off on the tile inset like a rug in the doorway. He empties his pockets into a bowl—whatever he doesn't recognize or need, goes into a metal trashcan under the foyer table.

He trots up the stairs, down the hall and past a large old-fashioned bathroom. There's a separate tiled shower enclosure, a free standing tub, and if you got Dean in an expansive mood, he'd tell you he'd kill for that bathroom, maybe explain—not complain, just tell the story, that when he was a kid, life was one series of motel rooms after another-- tiny, ratty, and most of the time, toxic bathrooms and tubs he could hardly stand in, let alone sit. So yeah, he fucking loves his bathroom. The rest of the house is fine as far as he's concerned. There's a kitchen, functional for what he does with it, there are two bedrooms, one turned into a home office—he needed some place to keep track of his paperwork, some place to shove the huge old-fashioned kidney desk he imagined his mom would have liked—the desk he spent all summer refinishing the first year of his 'retirement', so he wouldn't go nuts with the nothing to do. The official bedroom held another fantasy of his childhood—a king sized bed. At a smidge over six feet, even a queen sized bed, when they were lucky enough to get one, was a tight fit length wise. When it came time for him to pick out his bed, he waited, until he could afford a king. Every night he threw himself on that mattress was like a night in heaven. He told himself he deserved it. And he did, he really did. He stops in the bedroom doorway and tosses the little package on the bed, before heading for the bathroom.

In the bathroom, he strips down, tosses the coveralls into a hamper, checks himself out in the full length mirror on one wall. It'd been installed with checking out damage in mind, but the only damage he sees these days is dealt out by time. He wasn't as flat as he once had been; he was a little soft around the middle now, under the chin. The lines on his face are more pronounced, smile lines Gwen calls them because she has a massive crush on him. He turns and looks over his shoulder. He still has a great ass, still has strong legs, arms…he flexes his hands, rolls his shoulders, and his skin moves with the motion, all over painted with puckers, rills of white, gnarled skin. Fine dots and dashes of silvered flesh run all over him. He runs a thumb over a slightly faded tattoo high on his chest, stares critically at himself--if he had to, he could still take something nasty down. He works out to make sure that is the case. He's officially retired but he knows better than that. The life never really left you; you just dodged it if you were lucky….

And his dick works as well as it ever has, thank you, and that was the most important thing of all. He grins at himself, makes a disgusted noise at all his 'smile lines' and climbs into the shower. The water is hot, the water pressure outrageous…he dips his head and lets hot water pound the back of his neck, loosen up the inevitable knots of tense muscle. It runs over him, and his dick perks up a little as he relaxes, exhales…thinks about the girl who brought in that piece of crap Excel today, all long legs and happy tits and a mouth sinful as hell…he closes his eyes and leans against the wall lets the water hit him. He runs through his regular fantasies. Angelina, Eva, Ryan…Boyd at the Stop and Shop but that one was secret…he snorts and decides to just get the hell out of the shower. Tells his dick to heel and washes his hair, once twice, trying to get the smell of grease and sweat out.

He towels off, gets dressed, combs his hair, swipes a little product through it because he's just the smallest bit vain. He runs a belt through the loops of a clean, almost new pair of jeans, still stiff, still dark, cuffs turned up over boots because he likes the look. He's got a bright white tee tucked into the jeans. Frowns and grabs a bit of skin, pinches the small roll that he's been told only exists in his mind. He's thinking some people are way too kind. He scowls, sucks in his breath and when he catches sight of his face, starts laughing. "Fuck. Idiot."

He's trotting down the stairs, trying to remember where he left his phone because he never brings it to work; he's too busy on the job to answer his phone. The fridge distracts him with its siren call of cold beer and leftover pizza and he's sure one won't hurt and he only had half a sandwich for lunch, a slice won’t kill him....

He finds his phone in his jacket pocket when he pulls it on and stops dead in the foyer…weird, every once in a while his jacket smells of old leather and smoke, a greasy, sinus-burning kind of smell, and it sends him right back to the old days before it fades. No one else ever smells it and he's pretty willing to believe it's all in the mind. He locks the door behind him, waves to the pretty neighbor a house over from them as she swings out of her big old SUV, all smiles and bright blue eyes, and leading her daughter by the hand, who gets an enthusiastic wave when she shouts, "Mr. Dean!"

He kind of likes kids.

He jumps off the porch, goes around the side of the house to open the garage door and looks—yep. His baby is still there. It's goofy. Every day he looks to make sure she's there. There's a sharp beep-beep behind him and a contented sigh wells up, and he shoves the keys into his pocket, shuts the garage door again.

The BMW in the driveway makes his nose wrinkle but oh well. He's kind of learned not to look gift horses in the mouth.

"Are you ready? I'm starving, dude."

"Yeah, yeah, coming. Nag," he mutters, and Sam says, "I heard that, not deaf yet."

Sam's wearing his work clothes, high collared shirt, suit and tie topped off with a power haircut. He pulls off his tie and opens the top button of his shirt.

Dean smirks. "Whoa, don't go wild now," and Sam throws his head back and laughs, wrinkles competing with dimples, and Dean doesn't feel bad at all about graying at the temples, not now.  


 _~Sam~_

  
Sam fires off a final e-mail, closes the open windows on his laptop and shuts it down. He leans back in his chair for a second and sighs. It's been a long day. It's three o'clock, and it's time to go. No staying late on this day. He sweeps his desk clean and tosses some files in his briefcase. If he gets a chance, he'll look them over this weekend, but he doesn't plan to have chance. This weekend, Sam Winchester, lawyer, is Dean's Sammy and nothing else.

"Ash," he calls out through the open office door. "Lock her up."

"Already there, Jolly Green," his secretary mutters, cramming mysterious somethings into her purse. She looks up at him and smiles. "What's going on today, Sam?"

He just smiles. "Nothing important. My brother and I are running up the coast, not a big deal…"

She shrugs. "Still, even though you have to take your brother, vacation is vacation Maybe you'll meet a nice girl," she says, and mutters, "Your brother meets enough of them."

Sam smiles ruefully, and holds his hands out. "Yeah, well…you know Dean." He's pretty sure Dean's never spent any time with Ash, but , maybe one of her friends…Dean just works that way. Sam's used to it. He stops to look in the hall mirror—his tie's crooked again. He yanks it straight and sweeps back his hair. Getting a little long, he thinks, and blushes. There's a reason he keeps it that way. There are wings of grey over the temples, white strands threaded through the brown…he'd dye it but Dean would laugh at him….

The drive home lasts minutes. Really, he could walk it—was a day this distance meant nothing. He really has to admit, he's getting out of shape, and now muscles that had seemed practically effortless to maintain were going a little soft. Just a little. Monday, he'll start Monday. Maybe run the track with Dean. Fucking up at dawn, little Mary Sunshine, Dean. He's grinning, hardly aware of it.

He pulls into the diner's parking lot and waves to the owner. "I'm here for my order, Mary, how's it going?"

He can tell she thinks it's cute, that he's here to pick up a pie for his brother's supposed birthday—not a cake, ever, always a pie. He shrugs and blushes a little. It's stupid, but it's one of the few traditions they have, pitiful as it is. This, and pie. The way she smiles makes him pay quickly. She's got that Dean's poor old bachelor brother look. "Thanks, Mary. Appreciate it."

"No problem, Sam. See you guys for breakfast Monday—and tell Dean not to bother my new waitress." She smiles like it's an impossibility. Dean's got a reputation around this town.

Sam smiles back, making sure it's sincere and wide and grabs the pie. "Will do." He's out the door and in the car, and yeah--Dean's not hearing shit from anyone. This is _his_ weekend. Sam doesn't want the slightest reminder of anyone hanging around the edges of his time. Their time.

When he pulls out of the lot, he passes the uniform shop, and one of the girls waves—Sam smiles and waves back, and keeps his back teeth from grinding. It's stupid, it's just Dean, the way he is, and it doesn't mean much, Sam knows that—but still. Sometimes he'd like to lightly strangle some of these girls, not enough to kill them, of course. Maybe enough to be a warning. His fingers skate over the BMW's steering wheel, and the box holding the pie slides a bit on the leather. The white cardboard curls a little at the corners….

Of course, he feels guilty instantly. Well, maybe he's feeling guilty because he doesn’t feel all that bad about wanting to strangle those girls. Dean knows about Sam's occasional desire to lock him up and keep him in the house, but he's patient about it. So Sam says nothing, and smiles when Dean goes out on the weekends sometimes, wishes him a good time. Dean's had to be patient about so very much, deal with so much that Sam never even tries to fight.

Besides, they both knew who Dean really belonged to.

Sam drives carefully, slowly, down the narrow street the house is on. Kids are all over the street here, bikes zipping in and out between the cars parked on either side of the street—he passes the café that they liked to stop at on Sundays. It never fails to make him smile; Dean always looks like he's ready to bolt at any moment when they sit there. Like he's going to break something by breathing. Sam grins—he knows Dean mostly does the panicked act just for him.

Then Sam's in front of the house _theirs_ , and he let's go a hot breath, relaxes so much it almost feels like he's deflating.  
Home. Home, safe and sound, he tells himself, just like he's told himself for the last fifteen years, and with just as much wonder and pleasure—just as much wonder as when they were still moving around the country like frantic pin-balls, and Safe Home was whenever Dean came back to him.

The yellow duplex shone like…like that house in their dream journey. So peaceful, so normal it was almost unreal, with its little wicker set and…yeah. Okay, so maybe it is a little "sixty-year old queen with lots of cats", like Dean always growls but Sam likes it and deep down, so does Dean, even if he sits on the wicker couch like he's canvassing the neighborhood instead of living there. No wonder the neighbors love him. They get that it's kind of cute, his cranky act.

And speaking of cranky, there he is, mooning over her again. His baby. Sam grins and loosens his tie and watches Dean shut the garage again. When he turns he's making that face at the car. Again. Sam laughs to himself. "Hey, are you ready? I'm starving, dude."

Sam's starving for a lot of things...he plans on feeding a few hungers tonight. He grins at Dean, and thinks, perfect. He's fucking perfect, always has been. Ever since he'd first looked at Dean and decided he was what a man was supposed to be—and then had the earth-shattering thought that Dean was the man he wanted—he's been perfect to Sam.

"Where are we going, dude?"

Sam loosens his tie and says, "We're going wherever the wind takes us."  
Dean looks him over and smirks. "So…we're gonna go with your usual crappy sense of direction then?"  
"Yeah, shut the eff up, funny guy."  
"You love it when I act this way." It is pretty much an act, always has been…but Dean's right, he does love it. He loves it like crazy. Memories come alive in his mind, long, long days on the road; hunting things, saving people…he looks over at Dean and smiles. Saving people. Saving...each other. Here he is in the car, sitting next to the graying, getting a little pudgy, humming along to songs older than their generation, savior of the world. Sam laughs out loud. It doesn't get better than that.

"What?"

"I'm thinking about how I'm going to pin you to the mattress and fuck your brains out."

Dean frowns, rolls his eyes, and says, "Okay, but after dinner, all right?" Sure. Sam can see the flush of red roll right up Dean's neck and the little smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes…and then he laughs. "Fuck my brains out, hunh? You're a smooth talker, you are."

Sam shrugs, "Yeah, I learned it from my brother."

"He must be a pretty cool guy," Dean smirks, and arches his eyebrows at him. Sam grins and ignores the automatic, warm tug that look builds in his gut.

"Nah, he's some loud, foul-mouthed old hustler out of Kansas—"

"Dude!" Dean punches him in the arm. "Next time, I'm driving, and _you_ get the abuse…"

There was no better way to celebrate the anniversary of the not-so-much-end of the end of the world than with his brother sitting next to him, happy, whole…and knowing how important he was to Sam.  


 _~The End Of The Day~_

  
It's a long drive up the coast, but it's nice. Pretty quiet too, since Dean passes out right away, face plastered to the glass and drooling. The little hitching snores he makes keeps Sam from seeing Dean gasping out tortured breaths, pressed against the window with a wide dark red swatch smearing the glass. Sam stares down the white line and remembers sleep interrupted by screams, shouts, tears….it was a long time before either of them could sleep through the night….

But that was the past--gone--and this was now, and everything had changed for the better. Life was finally what it had always been for everyone else—some flavor of normal. More or less. They were alive, pretty much happy, and neither one of them had ever expected that. (And even if they'd imagined alive, they'd certainly never imagined happy.)

Dean wakes up a little cranky—no surprise--and wants to stretch and eat and that pretty damn soon so Sam pulls off the highway, bumps down a pot-holed, blacktopped road to a diner that from the look of it probably only served grease and more grease on a bun.

Sam holds the diner's door open, winces when the brass bell tied to the handle cracks against the glass and lets out a shrill ring. Dean saunters past, that cocky roll to his walk making Sam's breath catch a little—no surprise. Dean grins at him, the light only slightly dimming when Sam murmurs, "Don't forget what Doc Shinn said about your cholesterol level…"

They shove into a booth—carefully across from each other and not side by side—and Dean snaps, "So what, I gotta order a frickin' salad? I'm almost fifty—any years I get past this is gravy, dude."

An instant rise of hot anger flushes Sam's face. The plastic coated menu starts to blister at the corners and Sam drops it and slaps his hand over it. Dean's eyes jump from the menu to Sam's face and he swallows. "What?"

"Don’t—don't do that, Dean. Please."

Dean's ears turn red, and he snatches up his own menu. "Whatever, Uri. Just—relax, all right? You're frying the menu. How 'bout I get a turkey burger…no cheese. Izat better?"

Nodding now, smiling and magnanimous in victory, Sam says, "Maybe later I might be persuaded to blow you." Like he was dispensing a gift. Like it wasn't Dean's right. He smiles when Dean snorts.

"Oh, please. That's a forgone."

The waitress appears at the table quietly, but not quietly enough to startle either one of them. She smiles at Dean, gives Sam a quick once-over and turns back to Dean, eyes wide, smile wide, her hip cocked towards Dean's side of the table. "What can I get you gentlemen this fine afternoon," she drawls and beams when she gets the laugh from Dean she'd been aiming for.

Dean, of course, flirts like he's getting paid for it and Sam stares at the menu and tells himself that this is such a tiny, tiny price to pay--for all he has, for all the joy in his life--this was nothing. God, it was so small a thing. He listens to Dean order a turkey burger and orders the soup of the day for himself.

"Hey."

He feels Dean's foot between his, knocking at his ankle. Sam looks up and smiles. "Hey back. Listen, I'm just going to—" he tilts his chin at the restroom and stands. His fingers brush against the back of Dean's neck, it's a move so quick and subtle only Dean knows. The tips of Sam's fingers flush pink.

The food's there when Sam comes back to the table. Dean grins wolfishly at him, scraps of lettuce trying to escape the corners of his mouth.

They fall into an easy rhythm of banter, tease, grouse, that they've had years to perfect—they riff off each other like jazz, dipping and soaring and building and the payoff's in Dean's laughter. When the waitress comes back, Sam tries not to be pleased that Dean's laughing so hard at something he's said that she's ignored. He doesn't look at her and gloat…it'd be a small, weak victory anyway.

Pretty much like he figured, Dean goes up to the counter and says something to the waitress that makes her blush. She tilts her head towards him and Dean leans in. Whispers something to her and she's nodding and smiling, writes something down on a slip of paper.

It hurts, but not any less, or any more, than it ever does. He's never hooked up on any of their 'dates' before, but the woman is his type and Sam knows damn well he has no real claim on Dean. No claim and no right to say anything…not after what Dean's done for him his whole life. He smiles vaguely into the distance and wonders. Now, or after lunch. He'll sit in the car and read while he waits, or drive on to the place and wait. He's got a bookmark halfway through a copy of Different Seasons he'd found in the book shelf in Dean's office. He likes that the book is Dean's.

He grins at Dean like a fool when he comes to the table and huffs. "What are you waiting for, Sam, trumpets? Let's go."

 

They park in the bed and breakfast's lot around early evening. It's a nice spot, close to the front door. The sun's just beginning to set on the robin's egg blue and white wedding cake of a building, a place that's taken architectural gingerbread to dizzying, possibly insane, heights. Dean's muttering softly under his breath as he pulls their bags from the trunk and Sam…Sam just grins, especially when he's pretty sure he hears a soft 'bitch'.. "Wait until you see the bed, dude."

Dean hesitates and shoots Sam a look…"Am I gonna have to sleep on the floor?"

"I wouldn't suggest it, not unless you wanna hire a crane to get you off the floor in the morning—"

"Yeah, well, maybe next time, you can bring a younger guy, hunh?" Dean snaps and stalks off to the door.

Sam stares after him open mouthed before swallowing…it hurts, right at the base of his throat, but he shakes his head and smiles. Dean doesn't mean it. He knows how it works between them—he's faithful, there's no one else but Dean. Never will be again. Dean holds his heart and his soul and every breath Sam takes is full of Dean—because of Dean. Every morning he opens his eyes to Dean curled next to him, he counts it a miracle. Every time Dean walks back in the door—back to him, he counts it a miracle. Dean holds the key to Sam's existence, without him Sam has no life.

It's not that way for Dean. Never has been. And Sam doesn’t expect anything else.

That's not important. Sam knows that ever since…well, he's never been to Dean what Dean is to him. And that's okay. It's enough that Dean's alive. Enough that he's happy, whatever it takes.

 

Sam collects the key and a handful of brochures from a cheerful gray-haired woman, who smiles and has a little rainbow pin affixed to her sweater. It goes nicely with the pearl earrings, he thinks.

He unlocks the door and waits while Dean drops the bags inside. There's a long moment of silence and then….

"Ho-oly…shit…what the fuck..."

Sam starts grinning, takes a step back when Dean whirls around. "Sam—it looks like a ten year old girl blew up in here."  
He winces at Dean's description and then chuckles. "Pretty bad, hunh?" The room is all lace and cabbage roses, aggressively pink and teal. Pink and white striped wallpaper grace the walls; the four-poster canopy bed's piled high with lace and satin pillows….

"God, yeah. This beats last year."

Sam nods "It's a lot worse than Cowboy Bob's." Cowboy Bob's had been Dean's choice the year before. Bob's little buckaroo patterned sheets and walls had been bad but this…

Dean hands Sam ten dollars. "You win. Hand's down. I don’t think I'm going to be able to top this, dude—unless I book us a room at a rest stop. Damn."

As a way to celebrate a life spent on the road—or celebrate an escape from that, from staying at places odd and too many times, horrifying--this worked. It had evolved into a game the last fifteen years…Sam tucked the bill away, it'd be Sunday breakfast money when they were home again.

Dean wanders around the room, describing just how much the décor is causing him pain. "Oh, wait—there's a fridge, oooo, stocked—and TV. Thank god. And hey, is that a two person shower in there, sweet." He pulls another shirt from his bag and shrugs it on over the one he's wearing, grabs the keys off the spindly little table next to the door. "I'll be back in a few; you go ahead and get comfortable. Check if there's a pay-for-porn channel," he says and waggles his eyes brows.

Sam freezes. "What?" He blinks rapidly, waiting for his brain to come back on line. "I thought…I thought you were—never mind. Okay," he dredges a smile up from nowhere. "Bring me that book in from the car before you go?"

Dean looks at him like he's gone nuts. "Okay…you're not going to spend all weekend reading are you? I had plans for that giant head of yours. And the other one," he winks and suddenly it's too much. For once, it's too much."

"See you when you get back," Sam snaps. "And keep it down when you do." He stalks into the bathroom with the sweet two-person shower and locks the door. Turns on the water to mask the sound of Dean leaving but hears through the door anyway, "Hey…you're okay, right? With me running out real quick? Promise, I won’t be gone long. I just have to—to do something. You know."

"Sure Dean, sure." Sam leans against the door and breath leaves him in a shuddering gasp. There are thirty cabbage roses in the border, he's almost counted all the leaves before he's calm enough to leave bathroom….

 

Sam's stretched out on the four poster, stupid frou-frou pillows piled up behind his head, he's got his reading glasses perched on his nose. He opens the book where he left off and settles in to read. The door pops open just as he clenches his toes, cracks them with a sigh. Dean's standing there, giving him that face. "It's gross when you do that—s'creepy."

"Dean?" Sam jerks upright, drops the book.

"Geez." He drops a small cardboard box on the table. "You act like I'm not supposed to be here—told you I'd be right back."

Sam is gulping, it hurts to swallow, he blinks hard but he can feel his eyes fill anyway. His breathing speeds up—

"You—you thought I wasn't coming back, or—or. Damn it Sam! Damn it! You thought I was going to hook up? With that broad at the diner, right? Shit—that's so fucking typical of you!"

Sam just breathes and wonders how he got to be the bad guy here.

Dean glares at him. "How could you? How could you think that this is—this is not important to--"  
He whirls away, taking his face, his eyes, away from Sam. He slams his fist down, right on the little box and pink stuff squishes out of the sides. He lifts his fist and slams again, and yellow crumbs and more pink stuff explodes across the little white and rose table—the legs creak alarmingly, and Sam hisses in shock, calculating how much more their bill will be if the precious little thing collapses. He blinks again and realizes the pink stuff, the yellow crumbs, are what's left of a cake after it's beat up.

Dean whirls back to face him and Sam jumps again, but Dean doesn't look furious anymore, he just looks sad. "What will it take? What's wrong with me?" He runs his hands through his hair; the gray's more visible when it's wild and rumpled. Dean tugs a handful and asks again, "Why don't you care? Fifteen years…why don’t you leave?"

Sam feels like he's been gaffed. His hand flies up to his chest and presses his heart back into his chest. "You want me to leave? You…I will leave if you want that."

"No! No you idiot. I don’t want you—look, I know you love me. I know *how* you love me. That most of this is…gratitude. And obligation. So yeah, sometimes, I need to get out and forget. That you don’t want it like I do."

Sam feels like the hook has ripped from his belly to his throat. "I want you more than anyone, anything, more than---than. _You_ know how much. I want you so much that I'd rather let you fuck strangers than let you go."

Dean just flops down where he was standing, hits the floor, pale as a sheet and breathing hard. "Let me go? You can't let me go. I'd die without you. We aren’t… _anywhere_ on the same page are we?"

"You want me. Just me?" Lights flash inside Sam's head. He feels nauseous, elated…stupid. Glorious.

"God…" Dean groans and forces himself upright. His knees pop and he hisses and digs his fist into the small of his back. "Bitch," he mutters—stalks to Sam and wraps his fingers in Sam's collar, pulls him right off the bed and into his lips. Sam melts into it—force of habit. Learned response. Love.

"You understand? I couldn't go on one more day if you weren't in it with me. I don’t want anyone else but you. If you're giving me permission to love you like I want, then…I only want you. And I want to tell you I love you all the time."

"You do! You do that already." Sam can't help but grin and Dean shakes him with the fist still in his shirt.

"In words. You deserve to hear it in words. And you know…gifts. Sometimes." He turns to the box and peels the crushed lid away from what's left of a little pink cake. Driven into the mess of crumbs and frosting is a tiara. A few strands of translucent decorating frosting drop onto the table…"It said 'my little princess'," he says sadly. "It was awesome. You were going to shove it right in my face." He sounds…so totally sad that Sam scrapes a glob off the box-top and wings it at Dean, hitting him right in the forehead.

"I love you." This is what Dean was doing in the diner. Ordering this…magnificently hideous cake for his partner. For him. Sam looks at the grin on his face, the glob of frosting sliding downward, the way Dean scrapes it off with a finger and plops it in his mouth and Sam's beginning to think when Dean ordered it he said it was for his boyfriend.

Yeah. He was willing to bet Dean said boyfriend.

Sam's staring and Dean's eyes darken, and just when Sam expects him to wing the frosting back, he growls, "Get naked and get on the bed."

It's funny, Sam thinks, that after all this time, it only takes Dean staring into his eyes to get him hard. The fact that he's pointing at the bed with one hand and yanking his pants off with the other doesn't hurt….

The cake doesn't go to waste. There's frosting on his nipples that gets licked and sucked off until he's squirming with the need to have Dean's mouth elsewhere, and frosting that gets jammed into his navel, and Dean has to search it all out, twisting and jabbing into that little space and it really surprises Sam—he's gone forty years without realizing just how fucking sensitive it was. Frosting and crumbs land in his pubic hair but it's okay, Dean makes sure he gets every little bit that had been slathered on Sam's dick. It's noisy and loud and sloppy, just like Sam likes it, just like the first time, when both of them were shocked stupid by what they'd done together.

Dean's wet, thick fingers slide inside, and Sam grunts. Every time is good. Every time it feels like Dean's saying I love you, with his fingers, his body. He feels full, and stretched, he groans, and Dean laughs, a warm gust of air right in his ear. "You like that?"

Every time, fifteen years of "you like that?" when Dean's inside and Sam groans, "fuck, yeah." Every time. Like it? He fucking loves it.

Loves Dean inside him, slow, thick burn, pulling him back and forth, see-sawing between pleasure and a little, just a little, pain. That's what Dean's always given him, and the pleasure far outweighs the pain.

Dean's close now, panting, pushing harder, pulling Sam closer, grinding into Sam and now words come, Sam feels Dean thicken, lengthen and after all this time he knows his tells, knows the minute he's going to come and that—that's so hot, Sam thinks it's amazing that he knows him like that. Dean's a second, a breath, a heartbeat from coming so Sam says, "I've never loved anyone like I love you"—or words to that effect—and Dean gasps and comes. It's beautiful, it's amazing, it's incredible, like it always is.

It takes a bit before he catches his breath, and when he opens his eyes again, Dean's right there, grinning into his face. What can Sam do? He has to smack the back of his head. It's only right.

Dean yelps and laughs at once. "Bitch! You made me drop your present." He's rubbing the back of his head like it really hurts, but grinning and wincing—kind of a tip off it doesn't. Dean rocks back on his heels and Sam reaches out for his hip, splaying his fingers across the spray of freckles there. Pulls Dean closer.

"Here." Something bounces off of Sam's chest, a small bag stuffed with tissue.

"What the hell, Dean, you seriously bought me something?" Sam lifts the bag and sniffs it suspiciously. Dean might be over forty but his sense of humor is firmly entrenched in his teens. Sam's known, ever since he could walk, to check anything Dean told him or gave him carefully. He still remembers that year Dean had convinced him all the candy bars in his Halloween candy were poison or possibly filled with needles but the chalky gross Necco wafers were just fine—bastard. He eyes Dean while he pulls the tissue out and Dean looks too fucking uninterested, too innocent for this to be anything but bad…but they'd just had the most intense conversation of their lives and not even Dean would be stupid enough to prank him now…maybe.

In the ball of crumbly tissues is a small box. He opens the box at arm's length just in case…there are two rings inside.

"Dean?"

"So, I was gonna tell you this weekend, no more dating, hook-ups, whatever. Time's too short. And I don't want to share anymore. Of course, than we go ahead and have this massive melt-down. But great make-up sex, hunh?"

Sam looks up from the silver bands in his hand, two rings, one for him, one for Dean, engraved with a discrete copperplate W and…he blinks back hot tears.

Dean drops his eyes, flushes. "Yeah…I kind of thought that, y'know. I just…I love you."

Sam smiles, the room's under water and Dean's face swims up in his sight and his lips are on his…when Sam can speak again he says, "I feel bad, I only bought you a pie."

Dean laughs, cups Sam's face. "Sammy, baby! When will you learn--there's no such thing as *only* pie."

2-20-2010


End file.
